Dr. Marc Farber, one of Wall Street's best performing money managers and economists was speaking in Tokyo, telling the world's biggest and most powerful money managers to "buy gold and farmland". Sound familiar?:
The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.
I needed some company. It has been getting lonely out here.
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I feel badly for dupes on the Left. You folks were not bad people, and you actually believed you were doing or agitating for the right thing. You did not realize just how much the international credit markets were funding all of your pet programs, and now they are imploding.
I remember the aging hippies living in downtown Manhattan when I lived there in the 1980's and '90s. Yuppies were ascendent, and the social opportunities that made protesting so much fun - I mean, sex, drugs, rock n roll and college girls - were slipping away from the beard and tie-dye set (especially the former college girls... they found 7 figure Wall Street guys sooooo much more interesting than the Greenwich Village bad boyz... Who'd a thunk it). And they were PISSED. Still are. Well, I understand... it sucks to be them.
And now here we are, with Peak Credit and Peak Oil et al, and everything these folks believed in a and dedicated their lives to is proving to be a mirage.
Its going to be OK. This too, will pass. When the urge to mourn has gone, come on over, grab a shovel, and help your fellow man by "teaching him to fish". That will work better than "giving him a fish that somebody else bled for".
Boys & Girls Clubs, local YMCA's, Food Pantries, Good Will, etc... could really use your help. Step away from the computer and go get your hands dirty. This goes for those "family values" nose pickers, too.
Peak Oil and Peak Credit gave us Peak FOS. Hopefully, Peak FOS will contract in supply in line with Peal Oil and Peak Credit.
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So much for the Natural Gas glut. Storage is 2.9% below last year and only .7% above the 5 year average. One hurricane, hot summer, or extended winter and this will be the hottest ticket in town. Given that we have 17% real unemployment and industry is still reeling (NG is a major industrial fuel), this is quite the development.
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Read this article. When I was a young man I worked at day labor jobs during the summer and on weekends both during and after college for a while. At my best gig I made $50 per day digging trenches in the Florida sun for sprinkler systems at McMansions. I cut grass, painted, dug culverts, pumped gas... anything to earn a buck. And, perhaps because I was young, I was thrilled to have money in my pocket. I am embarrassed when I read articles like this: what do Americans expect? That a machine right out of the "Jetsons" can pick ripe tomatoes or blueberries without a bruise and beam them, Star Trek style, to the local grocery store? Don't like mind numbing work? Me neither. So I saved my dough, moved back home to New York after college, and eventually went into business with the money I saved (I worked for 2 of my older brother's trucking business for almost a year first, selling heating oil and gasoline door to door among a million other hats I wore on any given day. Working there was the business education of a lifetime, and I realize that not everyone is so fortunate. My brothers were much older, and were a great resource and inspiration over the years). What else does one do when you aren't qualified to do anything? I sold the business for what seemed at the time a decent payday (actually the business went bust, but the assets I had accumulated were very sellable - same thing as far as I was concerned). I asked myself, where do they pay unqualified people the most money? Hollywood and Wall Street. Well, I was already living in New York, so off to Wall Street I went. I figured, these guys are making 10X, 20X, what I am... and they ain't 10X smarter than me... (as a matter of fact, and IMHO, I couldn't think as slow as many of those folks if I were sleeping... but there WERE some REALLY smart guys there, too.)
The point is, not everybody gets everything they want all of the time. Some folks just have to start at the bottom digging sprinkler culverts and work their way up. No, life is NOT fair, and there is NO HOPE that any government program can make it fairer for all concerned. Fair is an abstract, and we all know about abstracts in the eye of the beholder...
Nope, the problem is "expectations". Those "expectations" are being fixed (crushed) right now.